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How efficient can a Dyson sphere be?
The shell variant of a Dyson sphere consists of an artificially-made shell of material about 1 AU in radius encircling a star. The sphere captures most of the star's energy and stores it for future use. Unfortunately, the megastructure will lose energy. It has a non-zero temperature, and therefore it will radiate energy in the form of black body radiation. As with any heat engine, we can assign an efficiency,
I'd bet anything that the true limit is higher and depends on the composition of the shell, but I have no idea what that limit is. Assuming that the structure is built by a Type II civilization but that they don't have access to handwavium or any other magical material, what's the maximum efficiency of a Dyson sphere of this nature?
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